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      Dianne Morales: ‘I don’t think New York City is as progressive as we’d like to think’

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      It’s a blustery day in the New York city neighborhood of Astoria, Queens, where the mayoral candidate Dianne Morales is due to speak to the crowd.By the time she arrives, the pitching of Morales’ tent, branded in her colors of purple, pink and orange, has already been abandoned due to the wind, and volunteers have been sent sprinting across Astoria park to retrieve hundreds of white campaign pamphlets sent flying across the grass.It doesn’t matter. Morales, who would be the city’s first female mayor since the position was created in 1665, gets a big cheer when she strolls out to the crowd of about 100 people, nestled under the towering Triborough Bridge.Dressed all in black and wearing a hand-stitched campaign face mask, Morales is here as part of her “traveling block party tour”, where she meets, and hopes to win over, potential voters ahead of the 22 June New York City Democratic primary.An unashamedly progressive candidate who would also be New York City’s first Afro-Latina mayor, Morales is a former non-profit executive who goes the furthest of her myriad competitors in wanting to defund the police, and who plans to revamp public accommodation in a city with a dire housing crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus.“I’m running because for too long, the voices of some of our most vulnerable and marginalized communities have not been centered and elevated and leadership and policy-making,” Morales tells the Guardian.“The essential workers, the working-class immigrants, the undocumented the low-income, black and brown folks, the people who operated our trains, the people who delivered our meals, the people who stopped the grocery shelves, those people who are not being taken care of by us, for far too long have been living on the edge, and have been pushed even further as a result of this pandemic.”This is Morales’ first time running for office. A 52-year-old single mother of two, she has spent most of her career working for non-profits; working to support homeless youth and later becoming CEO of an organization that trains young adults to work in healthcare.Her campaign has attracted the enthusiastic, non-wealthy support – the average contribution to her campaign is $47, and Morales says 30% of her donors are unemployed – that same combination fueled the elections of progressive New Yorkers Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman to US Congress, but she faces challenges.In much of the wider US, and around the world, New York City is seen as a forward-thinking place, a bastion of leftwing politics, gender equality and progress. But since 1834, when the mayor of New York City began being elected by popular vote, it has elected 109 leaders, every one of them a man.There are sort of political dynasties that are deeply entrenched and deeply rooted hereThe city has only had one non-white mayor, David Dinkins, who lasted four years in office in at the beginning of the 1990s before losing his re-election bid to Rudy Giuliani.“I don’t think New York City, as a whole, is as progressive as we’d like to think,” Morales says.“There are sort of political dynasties that are deeply entrenched and deeply rooted here. And the fact that so many people have not felt represented by politics that they haven’t felt compelled to participate.”Morales’ hope is that more people do participate, and with the first debate scheduled for 13 May, and television adverts already beginning to bombard New Yorkers’ screens, the race is hotting up. In a city with a Democratic majority, the winner of the June primary is expected to win the election proper on 2 November.With demand for racial equality heightened in New York after tens of thousands of people attended Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020, there is enthusiasm among many for the city to appoint its second non-white mayor – although Morales cautions that it should be the right candidate.“Not all people of color are created equal,” Morales says. Her Democratic running mates include Eric Adams, a former New York police department captain, who is Black, and Maya Wiley, a Black woman who formerly advised Bill de Blasio.“But that being said, I think it’s critically important to have someone whose lived experiences can reflect and speak to the challenges of the vast majority of New Yorkers or people of color. Because I think it’s one thing to be able to advocate for someone else. It’s another thing to really have a direct first-hand understanding of those experiences and those challenges. It gives you a different perspective.”Not all people of color are created equalMorales’ past includes having experienced police violence first-hand, most recently at a Black Lives Matter demonstration with her family last May.“I watched as much as both of my children first got pepper-sprayed, and then as my son got assaulted by a police officer,” Morales says.As Morales and her family were being hemmed in by police, she said she waded forward to protect her son, who was being punched by a police officer.“In that moment, time both speeds up and slows down, and I remember coming up behind my son, putting my hand around his chest, pulling him back towards me. And in that moment, that was when everything slowed down, I felt like I could hear him, felt his beating heart. And I remember thinking he’s a baby, and he’s terrified,” Morales said.“It was terrifying and devastating and traumatizing.”Several candidates expressed interest in hacking the NYPD’s budget after that summer, but as the primary grows closer, many have backed away from the strongest proposals. Morales’ plan – “defund the police; fund the people”, her website reads – goes furthest, cutting $3bn from the NYPD’s $6bn budget and swapping out police with trained responders who would respond to mental health, wellness and social issues call outs.Primaries in New York City are known for being unpredictable. At a similar stage in the 2013 Democratic vote, Bill dDe Blasio was in fourth place, but went on to clinch victory with 40% of the vote. That gives hope for Morales, who in a recent poll was in a cluster of candidates trailing Andrew Yang, a tech entrepreneur; Eric Adams, a former New York police captain and the current Brooklyn borough president; and Scott Stringer, the New York City comptroller who is hemorrhaging support after an accusation of sexual misconduct.Morales, unlike the candidates currently in that top three, has never run for public office before, but believes this is her time.“I am not doing this for the sake of the next step, or, just for the sake of holding office,” Morales says.“I’m doing this for the sake of actually trying to dramatically improve the quality of life and the access to dignity of so many New Yorkers.” More

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      Young, Muslim and progressive: is another AOC-style upset brewing in New York?

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      Steinway is a bustling and noisy street in the Queens neighborhood of Astoria. The area locally referred to as “Little Egypt” is brimming with people grocery shopping and bicyclists rushing in and out of shawarma shops to deliver their next order. It’s a north African, south-west Asian neighborhood made up of small businesses like halal butcher shops, hookah lounges and Middle Eastern restaurants.For Rana Abdelhamid, this neighborhood is home. On 14 April, Abdelhamid announced her run against the incumbent Democratic congresswoman Carolyn Maloney to represent New York’s 12th congressional district, a region made up of a significant portion of Manhattan’s East Side, Astoria and north Brooklyn. It ranges from the fantastically wealthy penthouse apartments that line Manhattan’s Central Park to the struggling working-class areas where Abdelhamid grew up.If elected, Abdelhamid would be one of the youngest members to ever serve in Congress and the third Muslim woman ever elected to the House.She has received the endorsement of Justice Democrats, a powerful progressive activist group that was instrumental in the victories of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman in their respective New York primary elections.Just as AOC and Bowman beat long-established Democrats and then rapidly ascended to prominence on left of the party, so Justice Democrats hope Abdelhamid will continue the trend of a leftwing revolution sweeping across New York City that has already had a major impact on national American politics.“My history in this district is rooted in my organizing, in my community, in my spirituality, in my education. I feel really connected. It comes from a place of love. This is why I’m doing it,” she told the Guardian in an interview at an outdoor cafe in Astoria.Abdelhamid is confident she can win too.“[Justice Democrats] know we can win this. It gives me, my team and my community a lot of confidence. It makes me feel like I’m a part of a broader movement – a movement for progressive politics in this country,” she said.In Maloney, Abdelhamid faces a formidable opponent. Maloney, who has been in office since before her opponent was born, is one of the most senior Democrats in the House. The chair of the powerful oversight committee, Maloney has called herself a progressive in the past but Abdelhamid said that couldn’t be farther from the truth.“This is someone who voted yes on the Iraq war. Quite frankly, leadership isn’t just a word. It’s a practice. It’s outcomes. It’s how you’re connected to communities. It’s how people who are represented experience life. If she’s calling herself a progressive, it’s because she understands the tide is turning. People want to elect progressives. She recognizes that,” she said.Twenty twenty-one is shaping up to be a busy year for the 27-year-old political hopeful who began her campaign just one day after the start of Ramadan. On top of hitting the campaign trail and planning a wedding, Abdelhamid is now also fasting. The young candidate has already had to break her fast in the middle of meetings, but she called the chaotic timing of her political debut “actually kind of beautiful”.Abdelhamid’s father ran a highly sought after halal deli, one of the first of its kind in the community. When he couldn’t make the rent to keep the shop open, the business closed and he drove a taxi cab to make ends meet.Born to Egyptian immigrant parents, Abdelhamid grew up in a one-bedroom apartment alongside her three siblings in the 12th district. Now, she’s looking for a chance to represent it.“A lot of working-class immigrants came here in the 80s and early 90s, like my father and my mom. They basically built this neighborhood from scratch. There were no shops like this,” she said, pointing to Duzan, the quick and casual Middle Eastern shawarma restaurant behind her. “There was one Greek pastry shop. There was definitely no mosque. I saw growing up how aunties and uncles built these institutions, built these small businesses with so little. Mothers selling their gold as Egyptian women to be able to fundraise to build these walls.”Steinway is now home to the Al-Iman Mosque, a tall, bright pink center point in the street. The grand building replaced a smaller version nextdoor due to a growing demand for a place of worship for Muslims in the area. For Abdelhamid, it served as a community center where she could make friends and take karate lessons, in which she now has a first-degree black belt.In the years following the attacks of 9/11, she recalled her mosque being surveilled by the FBI and NYPD advertisements for voluntary informants.“Overnight, I was seen as a Muslim. They would make terrorist jokes [at school] and so I felt a deep sense of isolation. People were very scared. They would change their name if they could. For me, this neighborhood was so important because I went to the mosque every single week. It was the only place where I felt not ashamed of my identity as a young girl. Where people said my name right. I felt comfortable in hijab and didn’t feel the need to take it off as soon as I walked down the street,” she said.At a time when Muslim American women were removing their hijabs out of fear of being profiled or harassed, Abdelhamid decided to embrace one. Two years later, she was attacked by a man who tried to rip off her headscarf.“Right after that incident, I just remember not speaking. I remember that because I talk a lot. I didn’t tell my parents for such a long time. My parents were scared and heartbroken but also defiant. That gave me strength. They’re not scared and I shouldn’t be scared either. For a lot of Muslim women post 9/11, it was a reclamation of identity. Definitely early on, when I wore my hijab, it was an act of ‘I‘m not gonna be ashamed. I’m going to be proud. I’m not going to fall to these narratives that are vilifying people that I love the most.’ ”Maloney was criticized for a 2001 stunt in which she donned a burqa on the House floor in an attempt to garner support for the United States invasion of Afghanistan. In her speech, she said: “I salute the Bush administration for balancing war with compassion, for dropping food as well as bombs,” which struck a chord with Abdelhamid who said she feared for her and her mother’s life at the time.“This is someone who wore a burqa on the House floor as a costume. When you look at the time in which she did that, as hijab-wearing women, we were afraid to walk down the street,” Abdelhamid said. “To this day, women who wear hijab, burqa, niqab are criminalized across the world. She was wearing it to justify a narrative that we are oppressed. My activism and organizing started both because of my class identity and because of my ethno-religious identity growing up Muslim in post-9/11 New York. They are both connected to this neighborhood.”At the top of Abdelhamid’s agenda is housing justice. Abdelhamid herself has been priced out of her neighborhood, along with her family, which means she does not live in the district – a fact the New York State Democratic Committee was quick to point out.“Right now, my family and I live a couple of blocks outside of the district. Like many working-class people, you don’t base where you live off district lines, it’s based off of community and where you can afford to live,” she said.A staunch supporter of AOC’s Green New Deal for public housing, Abdelhamid blames gentrification and soaring rent prices for her family’s living situation which forced them to move several times throughout her childhood.“I remember the first time we received an eviction notice. Our landlord sold the business to a developer and just kept increasing the rent. They were really trying to push us out. Oftentimes, it happens when there are massive real estate developers that don’t take into account the cultural needs, the economic needs, the needs of working-class communities, the needs of communities that built neighborhoods,” she said.Ocasio-Cortez and Bowman won their elections while Trump, who served to galvanize progressives, was in office. Asked if she was worried about energizing leftwing support post-Trump, Abdelhamid said: “I’m not concerned. I feel really strongly that we’ll be able to excite young people, people of color, Black folks, working-class people, immigrant communities across this district. Anyone who is really excited about a progressive ideology who wants to see something different is going to rally behind this campaign. People understand that progressive movement and progressive change is a long fight that is not going to happen overnight. The change that we’re seeking is going to require sustained levels of organizing, and this is part of that.” More

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      US split on vaccine passports as country aims for return to normalcy

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      With summer around the corner, Americans are desperate for some sense of normalcy as the rollout of the Covid-19 vaccine continues. Some businesses and lawmakers believe they have a simple solution that will allow people to gather in larger numbers again: vaccine passports.But as with so many issues in the US these days, it’s an idea dividing America.Vaccine passport supporters see a future where people would have an app on their phone that would include their vaccine information, similar to the paper record card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that is given when a person is vaccinated. People would flash the app when entering a large venue for something like a concert or sports game.While many other countries have implemented or are considering vaccine passports, in a country where political divides have determined belief in mask usage, social distancing and even the lethality of the virus, it comes as no surprise that there is already a political divide over whether vaccine passports should be used at all.Leaders of some Democratic states have embraced the idea of vaccine passports at big events like concerts and weddings.New York launched its Excelsior Pass with IBM in late March with the intention of having the app used at theaters, sports stadiums and event venues. California health officials will allow venues that verify whether someone has gotten the vaccine or tested negative to hold larger events. Hawaii is working with multiple companies on a vaccine passport system that would allow travelers to bypass Covid-19 testing and quarantine requirements if vaccinated.“Businesses have lost a lot of money during this whole period here so there’s a lot to recoup,” Mufi Hannemann, president and chief executive of the Hawaii Tourism and Lodging Association, told local news station Hawaii News Now. “We’re anxious to get this economy moving forward in a safe and healthy manner.”On the flip side, a growing number of states are passing laws banning vaccine passports, citing concerns of privacy and intrusion on people’s decisions to get vaccinated.“Government should not require any Texas to show proof of vaccination and reveal private health information just to go about their daily lives,” said Governor Greg Abbott, who ordered that no government agency or institution receiving government funding should require proof of vaccination.The governors of Mississippi, Florida, Tennessee, Arizona and Indiana have passed or voiced support for similar laws.Splits have already taken place. Norwegian Cruise Line, for example, told the CDC it would be willing to require passengers be fully vaccinated before boarding, but Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, said his ban on vaccine passports prohibits such a mandate.Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, like many colleges and universities, said they would require students to be vaccinated before returning to campus in the fall, but the school is considering backtracking the policy following DeSantis’s order.Though conservative figures like Donald Trump Jr, who called vaccine passports “invasive”, have started to broadly attack Democrats for backing vaccine passports, the White House has made it clear the federal government has no plans to release a vaccine passport, or require mandatory vaccines.“The government is not now nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary, earlier in April.Psaki said the White House would release guidance for businesses and local governments who wish to implement vaccine passports.Vaccine passports have historically been used when crossing country borders. For example, some countries, including Brazil and Ghana, require people to have the vaccine against yellow fever before entering their countries. And while vaccine passports have not been used widely domestically in the US, vaccine mandates, and the proof of vaccines needed to carry them out, are common. Many schools require students to get a host of vaccines, while many healthcare systems often require the annual flu vaccine for employers.Sensitivity around a vaccine passport is probably an offshoot of a broader vaccine hesitancy. Recent polling has shown that vaccine skepticism has a partisan bent: 30% of Republicans said they would not get the vaccine versus 11% of Democrats, according to the Covid States Project. David Lazer, professor of political science at Northeastern University and a researcher with the Covid States Project, said “partisan divides on behaviors and policies have been acute throughout the pandemic”, but Democrats and Republicans are more evenly split on vaccines compared with other policies against Covid-19, like mask-wearing and social distancing.The term “passport” could also be turning people away from the concept, said Maureen Miller, an epidemiologist with Columbia University, as it implies that verification requires more personal information beyond vaccination status. A recent poll from the de Beaumont Foundation confirmed this, with Republican respondents being more supportive of vaccine “verification” over a “passport”.Miller said the World Health Organization, which is developing its own Smart Vaccine Certificate and standards for vaccine verification programs, has been adamant about making the distinction between a certificate and a passport.“A passport contains a lot of personal information, and a vaccine certificate does not,” Miller said. “It contains only the information necessary to convey the fact that the person has been vaccinated.”Other groups including the Vaccine Credential Initiative and the Covid-19 Credential Initiative are working on coming up with standards for digital vaccine passports with the aim of building trust in vaccine verification programs.Miller said the ultimate goal would be to reach herd immunity in the US, which would nix the need for vaccine passports but would require working through the skepticism that exists in the country.“People are not going to feel comfortable in large numbers, in social environments until we hit a kind of herd immunity, where, when you bump into someone, the risk of an infectious person bumping into someone who’s susceptible is decreased tremendously,” Miller said. 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      ‘The city has multiple bullet wounds’: mayoral candidate Maya Wiley on healing New York

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      When Maya Wiley announced her candidacy for New York major – known as the second hardest job in the US – it seemed like her résumé was tailored to the moment.It was early October last year, and the city was reeling from trauma. In the spring, New York City had been the center of the coronavirus pandemic, the city rife with ambulance sirens and hospitals erecting tents to house patients outside their overflowing doors. In the summer, thousands of New Yorkers flooded the streets to protest against the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless other Black Americans killed at the hands of police officers.Then came Wiley – the daughter of civil rights activists who had spent time organizing residents to hold police accountable through the Citizen Complaint Review Board. A lawyer by trade, she had served as counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, and led urban policy and social justice at the New School. Like Joe Biden, who would be elected one month after she announced her bid, Wiley’s own history of trauma and loss – watching her father die on a boat ride – informs her ability to connect with aching communities.But in a race full of strong and diverse contenders – from headline-making ex-presidential candidate Andrew Yang to steadfast city official Scott Stringer to progressive Dianne Morales – Wiley is up against stiff competition.This combination of the pandemic and the George Floyd protests has influenced what New Yorkers want to see in their mayor. What part of the multiple crises that we’re facing do you feel the most equipped to tackle?All of it. The reality of the historic crisis that we’re in is that it has laid bare once again – like all our crises that reveal racial inequity – our failure to invest in our people. It is our historic failure to really reckon with an affordability crisis that is pushing out far too many of our people from being able to live decent lives in the city. And Covid, like all crises, was traumatizing.You know, 88% of New Yorkers who have died from Covid are people of color. We are not 80% of the New York City population. The highest rates of unemployment are in the same communities that had the highest rates of death due to Covid. And the highest infection rates, and are the same communities that are overpoliced, and are the same communities that are struggling to get the vaccine.If we want to recover from Covid we have to pay attention to all our people. And what we love about the city and what we have the opportunity to hold on to in the city, is the fact that 800 languages are spoken here, and the fact that 40% of our people were born in another country, and the fact that we have descendants from North American slaves, and the fact that we have people who live in luxury housing and people who live in public housing, and that’s part of what makes us rich.Is there a part of the city that you feel needs the most attention right now?Well, I mean, the truth is, the body of the city has multiple bullet wounds, and in different parts of the body, but it’s the same neighborhoods that are always hard-hit. So it’s the South Bronx, it is south-east Queens, it is central Brooklyn, it is the North Shore of Staten Island, it is northern Manhattan. It is the same places, because it’s where we have failed to invest historically. And frankly, we could have predicted before Covid, if we were to have a pandemic, who would get hit hardest the most.That doesn’t mean we don’t have other parts of the city suffering. I mean, everyone is suffering in some form from the emotional and spiritual exhaustion and trauma that has been Covid – of the struggle to help kids through online learning of, you know, the fear and stress of being fearful about getting the infection. It’s just where is there a cold and where is there a fever?New York has a very long history of white men as mayors despite being a very diverse city. Why do you think this year feels different?Yeah, almost an entire history: 109 men, 108 of them white men. You know, even before 2016 – and before the activism and organizing and the Black Lives Matter movement that started after Trayvon Martin was killed – we were seeing a real attack on Black and Latino voting rights and Asian voting rights in this country. And the affordability crisis has been growing in US cities, and in New York, again, for a very long time. So you get to a crisis point. Then when Donald Trump [comes along] … it creates a new kind of rallying cry, and gets more people engaged in the activism.And some of the changes in local law have helped enable people like me – non-traditional candidates, people who don’t come from a political machine to run for office, because we have a very generous public match program that just went into effect. That’s huge, when you have folks who haven’t built up relationships with wealthy people, in order to pull in those big-dollar donations that it takes to win an election. So I think it’s all those things.In terms of the post-Donald Trump vibe of New York, I think obviously, there was sort of a sigh of relief for a lot of people, but –No, there was dancing in the streets, and I was dancing in the streets with everybody else.I know that some of that civil rights work runs in your blood through, you know, your father and your family. How much of that do you feel yourself reflecting back on?I reflect on it every day. And I always have, not just because I’m running for office. Because, you know, when you’re Black in America, and you come from a civil rights tradition – which really started as abolition of slavery, but certainly was very powerful in the 1950s and 60s. When you sit at the feet of that, and when you stand on those shoulders, you think about the lessons, the strategies, the steps, the lenses, the impacts, what didn’t happen, what gaps, you have to fill, how you create multiracial coalitions, which have always been a critical part of winning change. The lessons are rich and deep. But the biggest lesson of all is you fight, you just fight.New York City has lost tens of thousands of people, and billions in revenue. How do you plan to attract people back to New York?Well, first, let me say that we have to acknowledge and celebrate that most New Yorkers have gone nowhere. We’re still here. My whole family and I were together, we listened to the sirens. Every night and all through the day you know, at 7pm we’re cheering our essential workers. We have a huge wealth of talent, and the commitment of problem solvers – people who stepped up in the crisis, restaurant owners whose restaurants were shuttered, who were feeding people, even when they didn’t know whether they would have a meal. That’s who New Yorkers are.And in terms of bringing more people back, because it’s not just bringing people back, it’s also bringing more people in, right? It is fundamentally about building and investing in what we’ve got, and the people we’ve got. I’m going to spend $10bn, increase our capital construction budget to create 100,000 new jobs for the people who are here right now, who need to work to put food on the table. But it’s not just about creating the jobs. It’s about how we have community care centers, drop-off centers for folks for childcare, we build it. For so many people in New York City, childcare and eldercare is a top-three cost of living. In addition to housing, we’ll build more affordable housing so that people have more options, even if they are on $25,000 a year, not just if they earn $125,000 a year.The other thing I will say is mental health, mental health, mental health. We’ve seen a rise in gun violence and people get worried. We have an opportunity to do the right thing to address gun violence and street homelessness, which will also help bring us back. But that is investing in trauma; informed care for communities that have high rates of gun violence. But also helping people be able to live whole lives, do better in school, stay in school. We have the opportunity, rather than spending $3bn a year on congregate shelters … to actually get them into housing with support services.Part of your plan is redirecting police funds and allowing communities to help create their own tailored violence prevention programs. With the uptick in violence can this happen soon enough?We absolutely can start doing this right now today. I was just going to the store with my friend Nequan McLean today. His nephew was 22 years old, shot and killed in October. And in BedStuy [the Brooklyn neighborhood] we were stopping at all these spots where a kid has been shot or killed. They do not have a violence interruption [group]. There is one nearby, but the boundary of their geographic area ends and leaves this whole swath where there’s all this gun violence. That’s just a money problem.Most of these violence interruption groups understand they have to solve multiple problems. We have folks coming back from prison into communities who’ve engaged in violence, but they get jobs becoming violence interrupters, using their knowledge of the community, their knowledge of the people and the players, their credibility, because they’ve been there. These programs exist in the city, and we talked to these leaders about what would make it more effective. It’s everything from fixing how we pay them, so that they can do the work more effectively. So those things are in place, we just have to expand them.This is another example. We can put social workers in the schools now, we just have to hire them. It’s not that there aren’t any – New York City’s rich with social workers. We just don’t fund social workers in every school. And the services that we need, like trauma-informed care, exist, we have to create partnerships so that the services are delivered in the schools. A lot of this can happen quickly.Some communities, including Black and brown ones, are opposed to the idea of redirecting police funds. How do you respond to that?When people are scared and traumatized, it’s important to listen to them. What they’re saying is “I think there is a role and a need for policing. And we also recognize it is not fair. It’s not right. Because we’re also victimized by it.” And they also want investments in their community.This is a good example: when I was in BedStuy today with Nequan McLean, we stopped at the store where his nephew was killed. In October, there was a police truck out in front of the store [when he was killed]. It’s like, has this solved the problem? And he said, no. Two other people were shot right down the block from the police officers. The presence didn’t solve the problem.We have some of the strongest gun control laws in the country, we have got to keep guns from coming into our city – we need police doing that. But we need violence interruption, we need more jobs and employment opportunities, we need more resources and trauma-informed care to deal with actually the things that are causing the increase in gun violence. But we’ve never become safer because of an increase in police.The delays in the city’s Covid response was partly due to the fractured relationship between our mayor and our governor. Given what’s happening with Governor Cuomo at the moment, how would you manage that relationship?I would manage the relationship with the governor the way I manage all relationships: open communication, starting with principles and purpose that meets the needs of people. We have a shared constituency. There are many partnerships, we need to get what we need from the state government. And if you want partnerships that focus on hard problems and real solutions, then pick a Black woman. Because that’s what we do every single day and in every single way. More

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      Why New York mayor is ‘second toughest job in US’

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      It was during the administration of Fiorello LaGuardia that the position of New York City mayor became known as the “second toughest job in America”.LaGuardia, New York’s 99th mayor and a man whose name now graces the city’s streets, parks, schools and an airport labeled one of the worst in the country, became regarded as one of the city’s greatest ever leaders, despite facing a collapsing economy, all-powerful crime mobs and civic unrest when he took office in January 1934.When New York City’s next mayor takes office, however, they will face problems on perhaps an even larger scale, with the Covid-19 pandemic having ravaged a city already beset by deep income inequality and facing a reckoning over racial discrimination in policing and governance. The job could prove, once again, to be second only in difficulty to being the occupant of the Oval Office. Despite the challenges, dozens of candidates are running in June’s Democratic mayoral primary – which, given New York City’s left-leaning political makeup, is likely to decide the city’s next leader.The most pressing issue will be leading New York City out of the pandemic. The city was one of the worst hit by Covid-19, and many residents are still haunted by the scenes of April 2020, when ambulance sirens were a near-constant sound as hundreds of people a day succumbed to the virus.In total, more than 32,000 people have died, and in the most densely populated city in the country, the need for a successful, continued rollout of vaccinations will be essential, as will guiding economic and emotional recovery.“In communities across the city Covid is related to severe job loss in industries and occupations. It’s been differentially hard on the everyday workers of the city as opposed to the professional workers. So there’s a lot to be done to heal and revitalize those communities,” John Mollenkopf, distinguished professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said.“All the candidates have lined up policy position papers on what they’ll do [regarding the recovery from the pandemic], but there’s also a kind of symbolic and emotional dimension to it – of going out to the communities and healing their pain, of inspiring them and giving them confidence in the future. That’ll be a very important thing the mayor will do.”The winner of a mayoral election is frequently a reaction to how voters feel about the incumbent – in this case the term-limited Bill de Blasio, whose popularity has waned dramatically since his election in 2013. This year, however, with Covid recovery dominating the election “that dynamic is a lot less at play”, said Neal Kwatra, a Democratic strategist who has been active in New York politics for years.A key issue for the incoming mayor will be schooling, Kwatra said – dealing with the lost year many children have experienced but also the struggle many New Yorkers have faced in balancing work and childcare.“Especially for working-class, middle-class, poor New Yorkers, for whom there is no choice, they have to go to work, they are frontline workers in many of these industries that are helping to bring the city back on its feet,” Kwatra said.“Figuring out how we get our schools open safely and securely for parents for teachers and for students is going to be an enormously important task for the next mayor.”As if wrestling with the 1,700 schools, and more than 1.1 million students, isn’t enough, the city’s next leader will need to breathe life back into a hospitality industry that has been decimated by the pandemic.“The job creation connected to those industries is enormous and significant, so I think part of what the next mayor is going to also have to do is figure out how to send a message to folks that New York is open for business, that New York is safe,” Kwatra said.Looming over any recovery is the racial inequality and police brutality that many New Yorkers or color have faced.In the summer of 2020 Black Lives Matter protests intensified the focus on racial issues, and the Democratic primary could yet yield only the city’s second non-white mayor. New York is still seeking its first non-male leader, with at least six women, two of them women of color, among the main contenders and a non-binary candidate also in the running.The demonstrations of 2020, which brought out tens of thousands of protesters in New York, means the winner of the mayoral race will be under pressure to reimagine law enforcement in New York.“I think it will be very high [on the next mayor’s agenda], but it also will depend on who is ultimately elected,” Kwatra said.There have been demands among the left to defund, either completely or partially, the police, and the next mayor will be expected to take a firm line with the New York police department, the largest force in the country which employs 36,000 officers and 19,000 civilian employees.Some candidates have pledged to reform the NYPD, to various degrees. Dianne Morales a former public school teacher and non-profit executive, has arguably gone furthest. Her website has a section dedicated to “defund the police”, and if elected Morales would reallocate $3bn of the police’s budget to more socially minded services.“As Black men continue to be essentially executed by the state day in and day out in America, it’s impossible for that to not begin to more profoundly affect this mayoral race,” Kwatra said.Maya Wiley, a lawyer and civil rights executive with experience in New York City government, could lean on her experience as chair of the agency responsible for handling complaints about the New York police department. Eric Adams, the current borough president of Brooklyn, who joined the NYPD after being beaten by police aged 15 with the aim of changing the department “from within” has also pledged reform.Andrew Yang, the tech entrepreneur who ran for the US presidency in 2020, has drawn much of the early media attention in the mayoral race, but in recent weeks has also attracted scathing criticism from his rivals, who have attacked his commitment to the city and his governing experience.It is a point they are likely to continue making, as whoever wins will have a battle on their hands as they grapple with the city’s post-pandemic finances.Reuters reported that a net total of 70,000 people left New York City in 2020, but the data is less straightforward. According to location analytics company Unacast, 3.57 million people left the city between 1 January and 7 December , and “some 3.5 million people earning lower average incomes moved into the city during that same period”. Unacast claims that this resulted in a scarcely believable $34bn in lost revenue.As government income has dropped, fears have been raised that the situation could be as dire as that of the financial crisis the city faced in 1975. Back then the city nearly went bankrupt, and leaders attempted to rectify it by introducing swingeing budget cuts.Kimberly K Phillips-Fein, a professor of American history at New York University and author of Fear City: New York’s fiscal crisis and the rise of austerity politics, said the current situation does not rival the fiscal chaos of the 1970s, but said it was important any incoming mayor “recall the dangers of widespread service cuts as a way of addressing fiscal shortfalls”.“At this moment in particular, such cuts could be disastrous. We need more faith in our public sector, not less. We need a coherent plan for reopening schools safely, and a commitment to use resources to accomplish this; we need public health programs that we can trust to protect us,” Phillips-Fein said.“Should budget shortfalls emerge, the city should strive to find ways to address them without stark service cuts. In the 1970s these helped to accelerate political and economic polarization, and the same might well happen today.”The picture does at least look rosier than it did a few months ago, after New York agreed on a $212bn state budget in April. The budget, if signed by Andrew Cuomo, the state’s governor, will increase taxes on the wealthiest residents in New York City, and, Democratic lawmakers say, release money for schools, rent relief and childcare, but the next mayor will inevitably face tough decisions over spending.The mayor’s spending will be fraught with danger as they bid to rectify wealth disparity in the city. The Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York found that income inequality, even pre-pandemic, has grown over the past 10 years, and the issue of affordable housing has been highlighted by the fact that Covid-19 rates were particularly high in neighborhoods already suffering from soaring rents.Data from Streeteasy revealed traditionally lower-income areas like Elmhurst, Corona and Jackson Heights saw dramatic numbers of coronavirus cases, whereas wealthy neighborhoods like Battery Park City and the West Village saw the lowest numbers. In the last six years, according to Streeteasy, it is the former that were already struggling to cope with rising rent.“Between July 2014 and July 2020, rents in the zip codes that would be most affected by Covid-19 rose by 22%. That’s twice the rate of the city overall, where rents grew 11%. In what would turn out to be low-Covid-19 zip codes, rents rose by 10% in the same period,” Streeteasy said.Putting all these issues together, it is clear that the next mayor will have a daunting task ahead in terms of hauling New York City back on track. But as the city reports an encouraging vaccination rate, and as bars, restaurants and sporting venues begin to reopen, there are plenty of people who think reports of the city’s demise are exaggerated.“We’ll need a mayor that understands that the Covid crisis revealed in new ways the underlying class and status divisions in the city,” Mollenkopf said.“But New York is going to come back faster and better than the skeptics think. There’s a reason that the [population] concentration levels were as high as they have been in New York City – very good economic, social and political reasons. And the virus has given that a bruise but it hasn’t really changed anything.“So yes, it’s going to be a challenge. But it’s a great opportunity, also, for the next mayor.” More

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      Cuomo and the ‘macho’ problem in New York: Politics Weekly Extra

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      As the governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, tries to cling on to power, Jonathan Freedland and Alexis Grenell discuss why the state with one of the most liberal cities in the world has failed to match its politics with modern society

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      This time last year, Governor Andrew Cuomo was the man of the hour in New York, showing stability on a state level not seen by the man in the Oval Office. He even wrote a book about how well he handled the pandemic. Fast forward 12 months, and Cuomo is hanging on for dear life to a political career now marred by accusations of sexual harassment and undercounting of nursing home deaths from Covid-19. So how did this brutish figure come to power, and what does it say about the state of New York politics? Jonathan Freedland and Alexis Grennell discuss it all. Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

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      Andrew Yang leads the New York mayoral race despite missteps. But can he win?

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      Two days before Andrew Yang announced he was running to be New York City’s next mayor, he made a remarkable admission.As Covid-19 ravaged the city – more than 50,000 people have succumbed to the virus – the tech entrepreneur had left town, retreating to his second home north of New York.“We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan,” Yang told an interviewer to explain his decision. “And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?”Many New Yorkers couldn’t just imagine it, they had lived it – as Yang’s mayoral rivals were quick to point out. But if New York election watchers were expecting that moment to torpedo Yang’s campaign, they were wrong.Despite a slew of other missteps – Yang’s ill-advised plan to crack down on unlicensed street vendors, many of whom are impoverished immigrants, and his enthusiastic National Pet’s Day confession that he had given away his pet dog – Yang has led his Democratic competitors in polling since he announced his candidacy.Yang’s name recognition has undoubtedly helped. The 46-year-old might have failed in his 2020 presidential bid, but along the way he became one of the most talked-about candidates, winning a diehard “Yang Gang” group of supporters through his effervescent personality and his bold commitment to a universal basic income, which would grant $1,000-a-month to US citizens.A New Yorker who doesn’t keep a keen eye on local affairs is still likely to have heard of Yang, but might be less aware of rivals like Eric Adams, Scott Stringer, Maya Wiley and Dianne Morales, who have spent their careers working largely away from the headlines in local New York politics or activism.Yang’s position as frontrunner has put a target on his back, even if “undecided” remains the number one choice for New Yorkers. With the first Democratic primary debates scheduled for 13 May, the race is beginning to heat up, and as New Yorkers begin to pay more attention, Yang has found himself attacked on all sides.First Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president who is polling second, wrongly said Yang had “never held a job in his entire life” and accused him of abandoning New York City at “its darkest moment”. Yang’s campaign said Adams had “crossed a line with his false and reprehensible attacks”.Then, on Monday, Scott Stringer, New York City’s comptroller, slammed Yang’s street vendor crackdown proposal – something Yang has since said he regrets.“We can’t have a leader who tweets first and thinks second,” Stringer, who has also criticized Yang’s transport ideas, said. He added: “Cracking down on street vendors is part of the criminalization of poverty.”At times it has felt like open season on Yang, who has also been criticized by Maya Wiley, who if elected would be New York City’s first female mayor. “New York is not another startup where Andrew Yang can play with other people’s money and fail up,” Wiley said in a scathing statement.Yang’s first startup, which aimed to help celebrities give money to charity, failed, but his involvement with a testing preparation company called Manhattan GMAT was more successful, and made him a millionaire.For all the mudslinging, Yang has plenty going for him. He’s the best known, and an affable, engaging campaigner with a knack for making headlines, even if sometimes for the wrong reasons. He has managed to engage New Yorkers where others have struggled, whether by releasing a campaign rap video – Yang does not rap in it – or pitching pie-in-the-sky ideas like building a casino on New York’s Governors Island, a concept explicitly barred by a federal deed.He has plenty of money too, although the projected $6.5m he raised in the first two months of his campaign is less than the $8m Adams had on hand in mid-March. On Tuesday Politico reported that three political action committees – groups which support, but are officially unconnected to a politician’s campaign – were coalescing behind Yang, aiming to raise $6m for TV ads. At least one other committee has also started fundraising against Yang.So can he win?“My gut instinct is to say no,” John Mollenkopf, distinguished professor of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, said. “He doesn’t really have much of a solid organic connection to constituencies in New York City. He may have a kind of name recognition, a public popularity, [he’s a] fun guy, [and] I think New Yorkers do like people who rock the boat, who are a little bit insouciant in the way they consider the political establishment.”Mollenkopf added: “But that’s not the same thing as sufficiently deep political support to mobilize the kind of forces that are necessary to turn out a majority in a Democratic primary election.”While Yang has dominated the headlines, other candidates have been gobbling up endorsements from key unions and progressive groups. On Wednesday the Working Families party, a progressive party which endorses Democratic candidates, chose Stringer as its first choice, Dianne Morales as second choice, and Maya Wiley as third choice. Yang was not mentioned.Wiley, who previously served as counsel to the current mayor, Bill de Blasio, also won the coveted endorsement of 1199SEIU, the union which represents New York City’s healthcare workers and comprises a majority of women of color. Adams has been endorsed by more than a dozen unions and organizations, as has Stringer.If those groups can turn out members, it could spell trouble for Yang, who will be fearful of repeating his last election bid.In 2020 Yang became one of the most talked about figures in the Democratic presidential primary, but couldn’t translate that into votes. He finished a distant sixth in Iowa and an even more distant eighth in New Hampshire, before dropping out of the race.In New York City mayoral elections, being the frontrunner can be a poisoned chalice. At this stage in 2013, De Blasio was far from being the favorite, while Michael Bloomberg came from behind to win in 2001.To add to the uncertainty, this year the Democratic mayoral candidate will be selected by ranked choice voting for the first time, further muddying the waters. When the Democratic primary takes place on 22 June, Yang will hope to buck the previous trends. More

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      New details revealed of Cuomo’s ‘VIP’ Covid list for members of his inner circle

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      New York’s beleaguered governor, Andrew Cuomo, faces further allegations that his administration provided preferential treatment to members of his inner circle after seven people with knowledge of coronavirus testing practices in the state came forward with new details of a so-called “VIP” testing program.

      The individuals, who spoke anonymously to the Washington Post, described several instances of preferential treatment offered to family and friends of the governor, including his brother, the TV presenter Chris Cuomo, and his brother-in-law, the fashion designer Kenneth Cole.
      Cuomo has come under sustained pressure to resign following several allegations of sexual misconduct. The governor has vowed to remain in his position as the state attorney general investigates.
      Cuomo is also under pressure over his handling of Covid figures in nursing homes.
      The allegations include that during the early days of the pandemic when testing was scarce in New York, health officials fast-tracked testing for those labelled “inner circles”, “specials” or “criticals” and kept a separate testing priority database for about 100 individuals at one of New York’s first Covid-19 response hubs.
      According to two sources who spoke to the Post, a senior state physician also tasked with coordinating testing at nursing homes was dispatched to Chris Cuomo’s house in the Hamptons on a number of occasions to conduct testing during visits that took hours.
      One nurse alleged that fast-track testing offered to Cole was then driven by state troopers to a testing facility in the state capital, Albany, in order to get results as quickly as possible.
      One of the nurses recalled staff being instructed to prepare for members of Cuomo’s inner circle arriving for testing at one state testing site.
      “I remember them being like, ‘They’re coming, they’re coming,’” the nurse told the Post, describing how staff announced when members of the Cuomo family arrived. “And they would say, ‘Have the state trooper ready … have it ready to go to Wadsworth.’ There was a lot of anxiety over those samples getting to the right place.”
      The nurse added: “They were treated like royalty. I didn’t understand why they were able to jump the line.”
      A spokesman for Cuomo refuted the allegations.
      “There was no ‘VIP’ program as the Washington Post describes – when priority was given, it was to nurses, guardsmen, state workers and other government officials central to the pandemic response and those they were in direct contact with, as well as individuals believed to have been exposed to Covid who had the capability to spread it further and impact vital operations.”
      A spokesperson for Cole did not respond to the allegations. A CNN spokesperson said it would not comment on employee’s medical care.
      The latest set of allegations follow reporting by the Albany Times-Union and the Post that first uncovered the alleged scheme. More